Western Michigan University to air 'lost' recording of Martin Luther King's 1963 speech in Kalamazoo

KALAMAZOO, MI —Western Michigan
University will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.'s visit to Kalamazoo on Dec. 2 by airing part of a rarely heard speech.

Martin Luther King spoke at Western Michigan University in December 1963.MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette File

"50 Years Later: Honoring the Legacy of MLK" will
take place at noon Monday in the North Ballroom of the Bernhard Center.

The free public event will include excerpts of a speech by King that was lost for almost 30 years.

"Rarely, do you get a person like Dr. King that would make a
visit to your campus," said Tony Dennis, director of graduate student recruitment and retention at WMU and
chairman of the MLK Celebration Committee. "It's really a special moment for us. We would just
encourage people to stop by for an hour and share that and celebrate with us."

King spoke at Read Fieldhouse on Dec. 18, 1963 -- four
months after delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., and just weeks after the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Ed Gordon, an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster and WMU
alumnus, will be the keynote speaker and lead a panel of students and community
members.

The civil rights icon came to WMU as part of the university's "Conscience
of America" series, which the honors college created in response to an appearance at WMU earlier that year by former Gov. Ross Barnett of Mississippi, a staunch segregationist who was invited by the senior class, said Thomas Coyne, WMU vice president emeritus of student affairs, who attended King's speech in 1963.

"It was a fortuitous time on Western's campus. It was a good
teachable moment. I think the students who were there on the campus that year
had a chance to recognize two sides to a very, very important issue in this
country," said Coyne, who added that then-WMU President James Miller resisted pressure from the governor on down to the local NAACP to cancel Barnett's invitation. "Western was exposed to that head-on by two extremely ardent
defenders of both sides. It was a learning experience that students would have appreciated
later rather than at the time."

Coyne said that King's address at WMU was a more quiet one, with no rousing moments as in "I Have a Dream" speech, which he had given earlier that year. King was particularly effective during the question-and-answer period, Coyne said.

"He came in and gave a very good speech. I thought at the
time that he was almost somber in his demeanor. He was very grave," said Coyne, who will participate in the panel discussion Dec. 2.

"It was an opportunity to see somebody who was truly important to the history of
the United States," said Coyne. "The battle for civil rights -- that was shared by a lot of
people on the Western campus at that time."

Despite the fact that King arrived in Kalamazoo during a "raging snowstorm," Coyne said, an audience of
2,000 people turned out to hear him.

King spoke on a wide variety of topics, including civil rights, poverty, nuclear war and the assassination of President Kennedy, which had taken place less than a month earlier.

Coyne said that, at the time, he was particularly struck by King's response to a question about whether Kennedy's assassination would harm the chances of civil rights legislation. King responded that Kennedy would have more influence on the bill in
his death than he would have had he still been alive.

"I think he was correct," said Coyne, who added that he also found the comment "remarkably prophetic" regarding King's own legacy. "He was talking about Kennedy, but he could have been talking about
himself."

The tape was rebroadcast after King's assassination in 1968 but was later lost until 1997, when a Kalamazoo man contacted WMUK.

Phill Novess found a copy of King's address on a reel‐to‐reel machine given to him by his grandfather, who owned a grocery store and had accepted the machine as collateral in exchange for groceries in the early 1970s, according to information from WMU's Archives and Regional History Collections. After the senior Novess sold the store, he took the machine home and stored it in his basement.

The recording has been restored and parts
will be used during the Dec. 2 anniversary event.

In addition, the event will feature remarks by WMU President John Dunn, a keynote address and a panel moderated by Gordon, host
of the nationally syndicated radio program "Weekend with Ed Gordon" and
former reporter for NBC's "Today Show" and "Nightline,"
CBS' "60 Minutes II," and National Public Radio.

Kalamazoo panelists will include:

• Thomas Coyne, WMU vice president emeritus for student
affairs, who was a staff member when he attended the King talk in 1963;

• Parnell Flemming, WMU's 2013 homecoming king, a political
science major with an emphasis in public law and vice president of the Black
Student Union;

• Hailey Mangrum, a student ambassador and homecoming
coordinator who's affiliated with the Western Student Association and You
Beautiful Black Woman; and

• Brandy Morgan, speaker of the Western Student
Association.

WMU's Office of Multicultural Affairs is coordinating the
event.

To see a transcript of the original broadcast and
photographs of King's speech, visit wmich.edu/mlk.

Yvonne Zipp is a staff writer at the Kalamazoo Gazette. Email her at yzipp@mlive.com or follow her on Twitter.